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Astute readers…

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 3:52 pm by Mark Shea

Astute readers… 2014-12-31T15:52:19-07:00 Mark Shea

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will notice that, having cooled off after the Prolife Victory Celebrations over the election of Rudy Giuliani with a Pretty Face, I have altered the language at the end of this post. That’s because I think Mark Twain is right: Never attribute to malice what is sufficiently explicable by stupidity.

Tom Kreitzberg sums up my exasperation with the prolife movement’s ongoing metamorphosis into an organ grinder monkey for the Thing That Used to Be Conservatism in a post so compact and economical in expression I’m just going to cut and paste it:

***

Two-fer

Scott Brown (R, MA) is pro-abortion and pro-torture. Why wouldn’t Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorse him?

Too catty?

Scott Brown (R, MA) is pro-choice and pro-enhanced interrogation techniques. Why wouldn’t Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorse him?

Better?

I’m not among those who insist an advocacy group ought to endorse only those candidates who endorse the group’s whole platform. I get that the least bad choice is better than the greatest bad choice. I get that, in a place like Massachusetts, the least bad choice is likely to be pretty bad, and anything even approximating an electoral victory for a right-to-life group is likely to be pretty rare.

What I don’t get is why you’d be giddy over the least bad choice’s electoral victory. MCFL is daydreaming about the dreamy signs they’ll bring to the March for Life tomorrow. Tomorrow, as in the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which MCFL’s dreamy new senator endorses.

During the last presidential campaign, Zippy argued that political endorsements corrupted pro-life groups; he particularly had in mind how embryonic stem cell research disappeared from the list of life issues when a pro-life group endorsed John McCain. The same thing happened with MCFL in its endorsement of Scott Brown. What are the odds?

It’s worse in the latter case, of course, since MCFL couldn’t even bring itself to list “legal abortion” as a life issue.

Nor did it mention “constitutional amendment,” even though just last month MCFL president Anne Fox wrote that being pro-life “implies support for a constitutional amendment” as a reason for not endorsing Jack E. Robinson — who calls himself “personally pro-life” and agrees “that the law should protect the right to life of each human being from conception to natural death” — in the Republican primary.

Anne Fox has asked for ideas for signs to carry at the March for Life. Here’s mine:

MASSACHUSETTS
Now With 10% Less Evil
All it Costs is Your Soul
You’re Welcome!

Too catty? How about this:

MASSACHUSETTS CITIZENS FOR LIFE
37 Years In & Brown’s The Best We Can Do
Sorry
We’ll Keep Trying

***

It’s hard to improve on that perfection, but being a garrulous Irishman I will try.

In 2008, Lydia McGrew chronicled the devolution of the prolife movement’s continual willingness to define deviancy down in order to accomodate the needs of the Phone It In on Roe v. Wade Day party. Time was, back in 2000, we all needed to get on board and support George W. Bush and the GOP because, if we didn’t, then the hideous John McCain with his odious support for embryonic stem cell research would be nominated (NRLC article c. 2000: “Fetal Tissue Harvesting: An Ethical Free-fall“).

So everybody got in line and did what they were told. Hurray! Bush was elected. The prolife movement scores a victory. Then Bush caved on ESCR.

No matter. We still have to support him and the GOP, because they’re holding the line and keeping America at sub-Carthaginian levels of respect for human life, much as the GOP has lackadaisically done for 30 years. Meanwhile, we needed to play ball and support a disastrous war and fiscal policies normally associated with drunken sailors. Right, chief! We saluted smartly and chased the carrot again.

Then 2008 came. Shazam! Suddenly we all had to support McCain and ESCR was, well, not an issue any more. Gotta cannibalize some eggs to make an omelette. Practical politics and all. Shut up and vote GOP or the babies get it. McGrew, like many prolifers, notices that the GOP seems to much more interested in exploiting the prolife movement than ever making any serious efforts at enacting its agenda.

As it happens, the GOP lost rather badly and gods of the copybook headings with terror and slaughter returned, in part due to the fact that instead of doing much beyond the most minimal token efforts on abortion, they spent like drunken sailors and poured our blood and treasure into a dubious war while committing themselves to the proposition that torture is positive good and (increasingly) a core value of the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism while continuing to send the twin messages to prolifers “Vote for me or the Baby Gets It” and “Yes, I’ll pose with you in the photo op, but please don’t stand so close to me”.

And prolifers let them. Indeed, with the election of Scott Brown, we now see the spectacle summed up on Tom’s combox:

I do appreciate the irony of taking a detour after the right-to-life march to demand a pro-choice senator be seated.

So it’s come to this: the election of a porn star who supports Roe v. Wade *and* torture is gushed over as a “prolife victory” by multiple prolife talking heads while the GOP talking heads are already floating trial balloons about making the pretty-face Giuliani-lite candidate into President. Meanwhile, the Big Thinkers of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism at NRO are commending Massachusetts voters for not being held “hostage to extremists who would rather lose than support a pro-choice candidate” and concluding that the takeaway message from Brown’s victory is “Waterboarding wins“. Translation: Elect pro-aborts–as long as they’re also pro-torture. What could be more prolife than that?

Sure it’s a “prolife victory” in that, if all goes according to plan, Brown torpedos the Abortion Care behemoth due, not to his prolife convictions (he has none) but to his economic theories. But so what? At the end of the day you now have a pro-abortion *and* pro-torture politician extolled to the prolife faithful as the guy you have to support or the baby gets it and you have the prolifers, once again, complying–cheerfully and even enthusiastically! And all just in time for Roe v. Wade Day.The GOP organ grinder plays the tune and laughs. The little prolife monkey claps his cymbals and hope he gets thrown a treat. And the tune plays on.

Scott Brown for President: Or the Baby Gets It!

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